Fretting Fatigue in Mechanical Joints: A Literature Review

Fretting fatigue is a fatigue damage process that occurs when two surfaces in contact with each other are subjected to relative micro‐slip, causing a reduced fatigue life with respect to the plain fatigue case. Fretting has now been studied deeply for over 50 years, but still no univocal design approach has been universally accepted. This review presents a literature study that involves the three main types of mechanical joint affected by fretting fatigue (press‐fitted shaft hub joints, dovetail joints, and bolted joints) aiming at giving insight into the progress made in terms of design guidelines for engineers.